I have been postponing to read Lumen Fidei (Pope's Francis first encyclical) till today.
It's really..beautiful. It's something that you can relate to your personal life.
Take a look at this:
This is the most common misconception about faith, something like "leaping to a place that you don't know". A friend of mine whose faith was shaken once told me this, "Well, if I don't know if the medicine can cure my sickness or not, I'd rather not take the medicine because taking the wrong medicine can kill me." He also said it's like "I don't want to walk on this road because I don't know if the next thing in front of me is a steep cliff." So there he goes. Stop mingling with Catholic friends that will bombard him with "one-sided story" about Faith and the Church. This paragraph reminds me of him.
However, faith is really a light. Okay I'm bad at recalling exact quotations from great people, but Frank Sheed mentioned in Theology and Sanity, that faith is like the sun light that illumines the view of a mountain. The mountain stays the same, all objects that we see do not change, but faith gives you a different perspective of these objects, eg., our life, our joys, our sorrows. Faith does not take out my suffering and problems, but helps me to see them with a 'light', that there's a meaning of things that happen in my life.
It seems that some of my friends have been having "quarter-life" crisis. While we who have faith sometimes take our faith for granted, I witness two friends that clearly tell me that, "I don't have purpose in this life. I just work for money, that's it." So it's not our imagination that people who do not have faith are seeking Truth and meaning in life, they're confused, they need something 'more'.
The second thing that struck was this following points:
Isn't this what happen again and again in our life?
That's what God does when He calls me to a particular path. It's not only a 'call', then God will leave you to walk the path alone, but there's something great waiting in front of us once we follow the path. Then, God also always walks with us. At difficult times, I always imagine Our Lady helps a one-year-old girl going up the steps. Yup, that's me, the one-year-old girl.
I've been reading Haley's NFP series. I think this call for openness to life is exactly the same like God's words to Abraham: it contains both a call and a promise. Scott Hahn's encounter to Catholic faith was started from how his wife studied this "covenant" between God and the people of Israel. One day, the wife said, "Oh... I think the Catholics are right about not-using-contraceptives".
Contrary to popular beliefs that Catholics do not use contraceptives, that's why they 'end up' having lots of kids, this understanding of God's call and promise tells us that individuals, couples, families, just can't live without God. We need to constantly pray and ask God, how to live the path that He's prepared for us better. One of the writer in the NFP series mentioned, that's why women are blessed with "monthly cycle", not 'annual cycle'. If what God wants is to delay the pregnancy, so be it. If what God wants to expand the family, so be it. If what God wants is to give 'surprises' (see Christy's post), so be it too! With this light of faith, everything is possible.
Have a great Sunday! :)
It's really..beautiful. It's something that you can relate to your personal life.
Take a look at this:
However, faith is really a light. Okay I'm bad at recalling exact quotations from great people, but Frank Sheed mentioned in Theology and Sanity, that faith is like the sun light that illumines the view of a mountain. The mountain stays the same, all objects that we see do not change, but faith gives you a different perspective of these objects, eg., our life, our joys, our sorrows. Faith does not take out my suffering and problems, but helps me to see them with a 'light', that there's a meaning of things that happen in my life.
It seems that some of my friends have been having "quarter-life" crisis. While we who have faith sometimes take our faith for granted, I witness two friends that clearly tell me that, "I don't have purpose in this life. I just work for money, that's it." So it's not our imagination that people who do not have faith are seeking Truth and meaning in life, they're confused, they need something 'more'.
The second thing that struck was this following points:
Isn't this what happen again and again in our life?
That's what God does when He calls me to a particular path. It's not only a 'call', then God will leave you to walk the path alone, but there's something great waiting in front of us once we follow the path. Then, God also always walks with us. At difficult times, I always imagine Our Lady helps a one-year-old girl going up the steps. Yup, that's me, the one-year-old girl.
I've been reading Haley's NFP series. I think this call for openness to life is exactly the same like God's words to Abraham: it contains both a call and a promise. Scott Hahn's encounter to Catholic faith was started from how his wife studied this "covenant" between God and the people of Israel. One day, the wife said, "Oh... I think the Catholics are right about not-using-contraceptives".
Contrary to popular beliefs that Catholics do not use contraceptives, that's why they 'end up' having lots of kids, this understanding of God's call and promise tells us that individuals, couples, families, just can't live without God. We need to constantly pray and ask God, how to live the path that He's prepared for us better. One of the writer in the NFP series mentioned, that's why women are blessed with "monthly cycle", not 'annual cycle'. If what God wants is to delay the pregnancy, so be it. If what God wants to expand the family, so be it. If what God wants is to give 'surprises' (see Christy's post), so be it too! With this light of faith, everything is possible.
Have a great Sunday! :)
Wow this is very good! Thanks! I really liked the part of Theology and Sanity that you refer to.
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